CHAPTER 3
ANTHROPOLOGICAL DARWINISM
for
Sea Dependent Societies

NEO MAHANISM

Is there a reader who, scanning through these first few ramblings and often chaotic essays onf the relationship between humanity and its earthly watery worlds, has not had a recollection or two triggered by personal experience. We all know that: "Jack and Jill went up the hill to find a Neolithic lake. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after carried by the rushing waters of the stream to the uninhabited lake below. Cognition experts will smirk for they believe that the human brain is organized in terms of schema and scenarios. Schema like 'climbing hills', 'fetching water', breaking crowns, tumbling down and scenarios which tie the schema together in a long remembered story. Our individual storehouse of schema derives empirical experience most having reference to some motor - sensory phenomenon. The schema are tied together in stories most of which are told to us by other humans or the environment but some are learned by personal experience. Thus our understanding derives from the commonalities and differences associated with the logic of schema and the commonalities and differences that derive from the metaphors of story.

The totality of our grasp derives from the recognition of patterns their commonalities and their differences. We can and do learn vicariously, from the experience of others. So it was during the period of history when the pattern of social Darwinism fascinated the world that a mariner Alfred Thayer Mahan identified patterns of human behavior from his observations of power at sea. So it was during the period of history when the world fought a great war at sea in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the semi-enclosed seas of Europe and Asia that a few scholar-practitioners modified the insights of Mahan to comport with their own understanding of the patterns of humans as they relate to the sea. It is time to present these Neo-Mahanian patterns as a framework for viewing the more elaborate and complex experiences of humanity as they related to the Sea after 1000 B. C. There is no expectation or even hope that the individual reader will adopt this transient framework of understanding but there is the hope that there will be sufficient empathy and congruence with the scenarios and schema of each readers mind that coherent and ameliorating community consensus will be fostered.

We can now begin to see a pattern as the world of the Mediterranean and the Middle East

changes from a large number of independent worlds, each associated with a valley-delta configuration of Adam and Evelike tribes, to cradles of civilization, in the Persian Gulf, in the Levant, in the Valley of the Nile, in the Aegean, the Adriatic and Tyrehenian Seas.:to Regional civilizations in the Eastern and Western Mediterranen, to a 'World Ocean' called by the Romans 'Mare Nostrum".

If the process was evolutionary, then future historians called Social Darwinists will have identified a process as a theory for prediction and postdiction of the future and the past. Such a process was identified by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan in his book The Influence of Sea Power on History. Modern Political Scientists, recognizing the xenophobic colonial chauvinism that buttressed this theory have rejected it with scorn. This rejection came and is still extant, despite the fact that Mahan accurately predicted the demographic , economic and strategic structure of the superpowers of the late 20^th century.

Professor John Craven (of MIT) and Professor Geoffrey Kemp (of the Fletcher School) attempted a rescue of this theory from the trash bin of history through a revision which they described as Neo-Mahanism. This too, has been ignored or rejected by academia and this rejection has been buttressed by the proclamation of Ronald Reagan that he too was a Social Darwinist of the Geoffrey Kemp School of Social Darwinism. Readers of this volume can take pride in the realization that, to date, the following exposition (with footnotes) is the only version of record and was used as the basis for measuring the evolution of the Sea Society described herein.

THE NEO-MAHANIAN THEORY

Societies which depend on the use of land water configurations to optimize on the natural opportunities for satisfying the human emoluments of life will, for any given state of technology, have an advantage if they have:

a) a favorable topological relation ship between the land and the sea. Superiority is conferred on island configurations, then on peninsulas, then to societies with single coasts. The land sea configuration begins to work to the disadvantage of the society when there are multiple coast lines, and then to societies which have only limited access to the sea and then to societies that are completely landlocked.⁽¹⁾

b) favorable natural conditions for ports and harbors⁽²⁾

c) a substantial percentage of the society having an appropriate knowledge of the technology of the sea.

d) a society whose culture and social organization allows or encourages the use of the sea.

These first four principles are simply a restatement of the thesis of Alfred Thayer Mahan in more modern terms. The appellation Neo-Mahanism applies when two other principles are added, viz;

e) that the first four principles are quantified in terms of the scales of human performance and the scales of technology and

f) that the sea acts as an operant conditioner, either rewarding one set of behaviors with respect to the sea or inflicting severe punishment for other behaviors in a manner which is rarely ambivalent and with a high degree of certainty with respect to reward and punishment.

THE EVOLUTIONARY CYCLE

When these principles are coupled with the natural predilection of humans to be land oriented and to optimize on survival of the tribe or nation, then an evolutionary cycle can be identified as follows:

a) For any given state of technology and after a period of conflict societies will stabilize around the optimum configuration of land and sea. When stability is achieved the initial surplus of the society will be devoted to palaces and pyramids and temples and other symbolic structures of tribal or national identity.

b)The development of these monuments will result in the development of a class of artisans and technicians who, after the period of pyramid building, will devote their attention to land based logistical systems such as roads bridges, aqueducts, granaries, warehouses, armories, etc. These will facilitate the societies ability to operate in a purely land based mode but will, at the same time, breach the natural defenses previously provided by the land sea configuration. There will also be logistic bases and networks which could be utilized by invaders of the society.

c)The establishment of these land based logistical systems will open up the way for invaders to penetrate the society. There results a series of conflicts of increasing intensity which will eventually destroy the land based logistical systems.

d)The conflict will then be resolved in favor of the tribes or nations which control the sea. If there has been no change in the technology during this period of conflict the new society will stabilize about the previous configuration.

e)If, on the other hand, there has been a change in the technology of the sea or other relevant technologies, the society will stabilize about some new larger configuration.

f) The cycle then repeats.

1.

2.